By Affa Adi
Edited by Harith Syafiee
Does the picture of the written Thai text above intimidate you? Or does it make you curious about how you are supposed to read it? Like, which are the vowels and consonants and how are they being positioned together? Oh, wait, do they even actually have those features in the Thai language?
When you begin to learn a language, you usually learn its alphabets or characters first. At least, that is the case for me every single time that I do (except Mandarin, I will try my best). Sometimes, at the sight of the characters, some of you would grumble at how difficult they seem and perhaps it crosses your mind that you would never get to understand this whole thing. So here, I am going to enlighten you on one of the seemingly complicated alphabets to learn—the Thai characters.
But before we delve into the topic, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not an expert in the language. I am only sharing what I have learned on my own so far. Therefore, there may be inaccuracies and I would appreciate it if those who are knowledgeable on this subject could comment here or reach out to correct me!
First off, the Thai alphabets consist of 44 consonants and 28 vowels, making it a total of 72 characters that you need to remember. It is also accompanied by four tone marks and each requires you to pronounce it in a certain pitch or tone.
While you can browse as many sites and readily available YouTube videos to learn, it is still hard to find a fixed list of the characters that you can refer to according to how your mother tongue sounds. Most of the lists employ the IPA symbols to represent the sounds of the characters which gets rather challenging for me to properly memorize.
Hence, I came up with my own list as an alternative to ease my learning of the characters. Bear in mind that it is not entirely accurate and the sound is much more different or more ‘flavorful’ from how you typically pronounce the letters in English or Malay. The lists are compiled by attempting to organize the characters in a manner that closely resembles the sounds that I could discern based on my listening.
This is the list of the 44 consonants. All of these characters have their own distinct sound and they are different from one another. Those that are grouped together are characters that have similar sounds–/th/, /kh/, /n/, /y/ etc.–yet they still have subtle differences. In order to distinguish them, it is encouraged for you to listen to how the native Thai speaker pronounces each of the consonants.
You can start by watching Thai Alphabet Writing on YouTube. The instructor explains the sounds of the consonants clearly and shows how to write them as well.
The consonants also have characters that look so alike with each other. This is where the tedious part comes in. If you are a beginner, you will likely encounter problems of getting confused about which is which and it is so easy for you to mistake it for another sound, but as they said, practice makes perfect and you will definitely get there!
Next, we have the 28 Thai vowels. The vowels are much more complex to memorise. Most of them have a set of short and long vowels, meaning one is pronounced in a short, clipped tone, while the other is pronounced by drawing it out a little.
It is worth noting that the characters are written as a unit. The vowel does not come after the consonant but rather, surrounds the consonant. Focus on the red-highlighted symbols, those are the vowels that most come in a set of two or more components to express the desired sound. The black-highlighted one is where the consonant is supposed to be placed.
Examples:
เพื่อน = /peuan/ (friend)
ท้องฟ้า = /thongfaa/ (sky)
กลัว = /gluaa/ (scared)
Again, it is better to listen to how they speak and I recommend watching How to Write and Pronounce Thai Vowels video on YouTube for a deeper understanding.
Interestingly, Thai is written without having a space between words and they do not employ any punctuation marks. As seen in the picture above, the end of a sentence is marked by a space, separating it from the next sentence. There is no full stop or even question mark used in the text to clarify the meaning. Since the words in a sentence are not separated, it could get difficult for you to tell them apart even though you already know how to read Thai. So, of course, the next step would be to learn the words!
There we have a simple introduction to the Thai characters. After all the explanation, does it still seem complicated to you? I would say yes every time people ask the question, but that is the charm of the Thai characters that I fell in love with at first sight. It has intricate writing with fascinating rules and systems, and it becomes enjoyable once you grasp the basics of it and try your hands on writing the characters.
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